For most of my adult life, I have been aware that certain foods and drinks are indeed bad for me – and you and anyone else who consumes them.
For example – soda – it’s full of sugar and all kinds of nasty stuff that is not beneficial to the body. So I seldom drink soda, and when I say seldom I mean maybe six or seven in a year. I know many people who drink that amount every single day.
Most of us know that eating refined sugar in cakes, cookies, and all kinds of other things is not good for us too, regardless of whether we choose to do it anyway.
I actually had a weird childhood.
When I was growing up we ate vegetables from our own garden, meat from animals we hunted or had butchered that we raised ourselves, and we ate fish I caught myself from a pond on our own land. Several years of my early life were spent growing up on a farm, with plenty of good food, exercise (hard physical work), and very little junk.
Don’t get me wrong though – we did drink soda and eat a piece of cake or a cookie every now and then – it just wasn’t every day. More like once a week or even once a month.
Some of that carried over into my adulthood I suppose – and for the most part, I just have never been interested much in eating large amounts of junk food.
Yet without even realizing it, I have been consuming far more sugar than I ever intended or realized I was even doing.
Typically I have been eating several Clif bars every day for at least a couple of years now, as meal replacements because they were quick and efficient, and easy. No cooking, no refrigeration – no preparation – just open and eat.
Over time as I began to think about being more intentional in my meal planning, and began discussing it with my wife – she pointed out to me the sugar in the little Clif bars and how many I was eating.
So as of yesterday – 10/11/20 – I have stopped eating Clif bars. Don’t get me wrong there either – they are definitely convenient, and they are delicious – and I am not saying I will never ever eat another one. Just that I won’t be eating any more for a while at least – and hopefully never again in the quantity I have been eating them for two years or more.
At the same time, I am going to try combining intentional meal planning elements from two very popular diets – Keto and Paleo – into my own variant of meal planning and see how it works out for me.
The Next 90 Days Using Both Keto and Paleo Meal Elements
For starters, as I already mentioned, I have stopped eating Clif bars. Beyond that even, I am actively trying very hard to totally eliminate any and all processed/refined sugar from my meals.
Here are my initial thoughts and goals going in, as I shared in an earlier post today on www.ldsewell.com ;
- Eliminate ALL Processed-Refined Sugar – While I normally never thought I really ate much sugar since I don’t put it in my coffee, or eat cookies, candy, junk, etc. on any kind of regular basis – I eventually realized (thanks to my wife pointing it out to me) that I was in fact eating a huge amount of sugar every day because I was eating 4 to 8 Clif bar every single day! Not as snacks but as meal replacements/meals. Part of my work is very physical, which is good – and to have a fast and easy source of fuel I was just eating and living off of Clif bars (which are delicious by the way!). That ended as of yesterday. As of yesterday that all came to a screeching halt – and so far – no twitching, or convulsions ; )
- Reduce Processed Foods of All Kinds – I hope to eventually do as much as I can to get as close to completely eliminating all commercially processed foods as I can. For now, I will just reduce it and see how that goes.
- Reduce Food Quantity – Already the amount of food I eat vs the amount of physical activity hasn’t been massive, but I can do far better I think. So I want to reduce the quantity of the food I eat daily down to exactly what is actually needed for functional fitness and for the energy I need to do what I need and want to do – while eliminating all excess food other than that.
- Reduce Body Fat – Beyond that general thought, I do not yet have a specific target in mind. I will have to give that some more thought (and more research).
- Evaluate and Adjust – As I make the changes, simply see what is working for me and what isn’t and adjust my approach as necessary and desired.
My Current Thoughts on My Version of Keto and Paleo
At this stage and for the rest of this year at least I simply intend to eliminate as many “bad food” as I can from what I eat, reduce the overall quantity and at the same time improve the quality of what I do choose to eat.
Starting with what I ate yesterday I will be keeping my own personal journal specifically for documenting exactly what I eat and what it is doing for me – or not – as the case may be. I will also be documenting my own thoughts and feelings along the way – and some of it will be shared here on this blog.
Though it will be summarized and will not be every itty bitty detail – it should be interesting reading, hopefully.
As I write this I have a bit of a headache now – and I am thinking I am beginning to feel the effects of significant sugar reduction, since it is now a little over 24 hours or so with no sugar at all.
Now I have to figure out what I want to eat and how much of it.
To begin with, I am going to go more heavily toward Keto foods – meat, eggs, and butter along with some salad, select veggies, and water. I will drink black coffee only (4 cups per day in the early morning only most days) and some hot herbal tea – no sweetener as desired.
At this point, I do not care about ketosis itself – and really hope to avoid that if possible, though getting close to it. Time will tell.
While I write books and teach online courses, write blog posts, and do other non-physical things from a laptop – I also still drive a truck and run loads several days every week. Those loads are for a dedicated account going to a specific chain of stores, which I unload, and I love doing that because I get plenty of alone time to think and I get a ton of exercise. That means I burn more calories every day than most people burn in a week, and I also do some additional PT every day – six days per week too.
I am thinking of adding some weight lifting every third or fourth day on top of that just to ramp it up even more – assuming I still have the energy to function. I have no idea how that will change since I am changing my diet so much in some ways.
Time will soon tell and we will find out one way or the other.
If you are interested in the results of my Keto and Paleo based experiments then remember to come back and check the next post soon! Until then thanks for reading and take care!